By Irza Waraich
Hamzah Nasser’s dad is a doctor, but halfway through his first semester of college, he dropped out. “I was so bored,” he said. Nasser delved into bounty hunting at 21. At 23, he opened a gas station in Detroit. After that, he started a trucking company.
When he wasn’t on the road, Nasser would make lattes for friends and family using his at-home coffee bar. “I didn’t even want them to come over,” he said, but he wanted to “make them coffee.”
In 2021, Nasser turned a beloved passion into his latest business enterprise: Haraz Coffee House. The growing Yemeni cafe chain began in his hometown of Dearborn, a city in the Detroit metropolitan area where most residents are of Arab descent.
With 16 locations nationwide, mostly through franchises, the chain is getting ready to open its first New York location in May.
Haraz’s expansion is taking place even as the town of Dearborn — and the cafe — find themselves at the center of the state’s “uncommitted movement” and support for Palestinians, as well as Islamophobia, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel last October. In February, a Wall Street Journal opinion piece dubbed Dearborn “America’s Jihad Capital.” Following the OpEd, Abdullah Hammoud, the Mayor of Dearborn, called for an increased police presence outside local mosques.
Haraz Coffee has raised $21,000 for relief efforts in Gaza in partnership with the Muslim charity organization Baitulmaal.
As Haraz prepares to enter New York City’s crowded and competitive coffee market, Nasser is confident.
“We don’t look at anyone as competition,” said Nasser, who is 37 and owns two of the stores himself, both in Dearborn. “We’re innovators.”
Launching a new type of coffee store in New York City, which is home to more than 3,700 coffee shops, could be challenging, according to Scott L. Newbert, chair of Baruch College’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Newbert said that since the coffee market is such a competitive industry, Haraz Coffee House may have to steal customers from other businesses, while trying to offer something new.
“When Haraz comes to New York, they’re not just selling coffee,” Newbert said. “They’re selling the experience, they’re selling the culture, they’re selling Yemen.”
The cafe could benefit from setting itself apart as a uniquely Yemeni coffee shop, with one of Haraz Coffee House’s biggest assets being unique drinks that don’t exist anywhere else, according to Nasser.
He created the pistachio latte before Starbucks, a recipe he takes pride in. Some of the famous pastries include a milk cake and saffron-topped cheesecake. His best-selling drinks, such as the Adeni (black tea sweetened and boiled with cardamom and cinnamon) and the Harazi (medium-roasted coffee with cardamom.) But Nasser said the company’s most important asset is its Yemeni coffee.”
Haraz Mountains
Yemeni coffee, first believed to have been discovered 500 years ago by Sufi monasteries in the Arabian Peninsula, has a long history. Cultivated in high, mountainous and drought-prone terrain, the coffee is known for its distinct, dried fruit flavor.
Nasser sources his coffee from a farm in Yemen’s Haraz Mountains, which is managed by a family friend.
“Yemen has such a long history with coffee and I wanted to bring that coffee bean here and sell it,” said Nasser.
Nasser has put all his savings into Haraz. Due to pandemic-related increases, the cost to build his first store in Dearborn was $350,000, almost twice as much as he initially expected. Nasser had to sell his trucking business to finance the new venture.
Haraz Coffee House opened its doors in April 2021, and has since acted as a community hub.
Hadi Yassine, a Ph.D. student at Wayne State University, said that during one recent week, he went to the cafe four times. “You can sit here as long as you want,” he said. “Nobody really bothers you. Whenever I want to write or do data analysis, I come here.”
Ragih Dean, a healthcare worker, has frequented the cafe since its opening, and enjoys both the music and the Yemeni brew. “It reminds me of my mom’s coffee,” he said.
Haraz attracted so many customers during the first months after the business opened that Nasser couldn’t hire employees fast enough. So, Nasser enlisted a group of teenagers and young adults, some as young as 15 — a decision that initially made him quite nervous.
“I was like, oh my God. I just opened a business that I spent everything I had on and I have a bunch of kids. But you know what, it was the best thing I did,” he said.
The youngest employees on staff at the time included Nasser’s brother, Mohamed Nasser, who was 15 when the cafe opened. The brothers would work 16 hours a day to make up for the shortage of staff.
Now 19, the younger Nasser serves as operations manager, overseeing store performance and streamlining customer orders from Haraz’s headquarters.
“I was there helping him clean the dust off the walls, off the ground; I’ve just been here since the beginning, by his side,” said Mohamed Nasser, referring to his brother Hamzah.
Haraz Coffee House now has franchisees in Illinois, California and other states. While the Dearborn location generates $1 million in revenue, the total revenue for all Haraz Coffee House franchises ranges from $25 million to $30 million, according to Nasser. His company takes 5 percent of the profits from the franchises.
The coffee enterprise has also created the Haraz Coffee School, which trains franchisees at Haraz headquarters in Dearborn on brewing coffee and making latte art, and also offers classes to anyone for a fee. More recently, due to high travel costs, the Haraz team now travels to new locations a week before each opening to train out-of-state franchisees — and stays for a month.
That process may evolve as Haraz Coffee House is working on a deal to open 87 new locations within the next three years — some in the U.S., and some in the Middle East.
Nasser said he believes his company is doing more than selling drinks and pastries.
“We didn’t just create a coffee shop,” he said. “We created a place for the community to come and gather.”